scholarly journals Gender Agreement Mismatches in Heritage Greek

Languages ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Artemis Alexiadou ◽  
Vasiliki Rizou ◽  
Nikolaos Tsokanos ◽  
Foteini Karkaletsou
Keyword(s):  
Life Span ◽  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Production Data ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Adolescent Group ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Internal Agreement

This paper investigates gender agreement mismatches between nominal expressions and the targets of agreement they control in two groups (adults and adolescents) of Heritage Greek speakers in the USA. On the basis of language production data elicited via a narration task, we show that USA Greek Heritage speakers, unlike monolingual controls, show mismatches in gender agreement. We will show that the mismatches observed differ with respect to the agreement target between groups, i.e., noun phrase internal agreement seems more affected in the adolescent group, while personal pronouns appear equally affected. We will argue that these patterns suggest retreat to default gender, namely neuter in Greek. Neuter emerges as default when no agreement pattern can be established. As adult speakers show less mismatches, we will explore the reasons why speakers improve across the life span.

scholarly journals Stability and Change in Grammatical Gender: Pronouns in Heritage Scandinavian

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 441-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janne Bondi Johannessen ◽  
Ida Larsson
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Heritage Languages ◽  
Stability And Change ◽  
Pronominal Gender ◽  
Gender System ◽  
Internal Agreement

Previous studies on gender in Scandinavian heritage languages in America have looked at noun-phrase internal agreement. It has been shown that some heritage speakers have non-target gender agreement, but this has been interpreted in different ways by different researchers. This paper presents a study of pronominal gender in Heritage Norwegian and Swedish, using existing recordings and a small experiment that elicits pronouns. It is shown that the use of pronominal forms is largely target-like, and that the heritage speakers make gender distinctions. There is, however, some evidence of two competing systems in the data, and there is a shift towards a two-gender system, arguably due to koinéization.

From case to topology

2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-307
Author(s):  
Bjarne Simmelkjær Sandgaard Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Case System ◽  
Multiple Processes ◽  
Constituent Order ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Sign Relations ◽  
Indexical Sign ◽  
Internal Agreement

Abstract The Scanian dialect of Middle Danish underwent a range of changes and reductions in its case system. I argue that these changes were caused neither by phonological developments nor by language contact as often assumed, but by multiple processes of grammaticalisation. The present paper focuses on one of these factors: that the relatively predictable constituent order within the Middle Danish noun phrase made case marking redundant in its function of marking noun-phrase internal agreement between head and modifier(s). This redundancy caused the case system to undergo a regrammation where the indexical sign relations changed so that the expression of morphological case no longer indicated this noun-phrase-internal agreement, leaving only topology (as well as morphologically marked number and gender agreement) as markers of this type of agreement. This factor contributed to the subsequent degrammation of the entire case system.

scholarly journals Brazilian Bimodal Bilinguals as Heritage Signers

Languages ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 32
Author(s):  
Ronice Quadros ◽  
Diane Lillo-Martin
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Production Data ◽  
Language Fluency ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Deaf Parents ◽  
Hearing Children ◽  
Theoretical Issues

This paper presents an analysis of heritage signers: bimodal bilinguals, who are adult hearing children of Deaf parents who acquired sign language at home with their parents and the spoken language from the surrounding community. Analyzing heritage language with bimodal bilinguals who possess pairs of languages in different modalities provides a new kind of evidence for understanding the heritage language phenomenon as well as for theoretical issues regarding human language. Language production data were collected from four Brazilian bimodal bilinguals separately in both sign and speech, as well as from monolingual comparison Deaf signers and hearing speakers. The data were subsequently analyzed for various grammatical components. As with other types of heritage speakers, we observed a great degree of individual variation in the sign (heritage) language of balanced participants who patterned similarly to the monolingual signers, compared to those whose use of sign language differed greatly from monolinguals. One participant showed some weaknesses in the second (spoken) language. We approach the variation in language fluency in the two languages by considering the different contexts of language development and continuing use.

scholarly journals Auditory Processing of Gender Agreement across Relative Clauses by Spanish Heritage Speakers

Languages ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Daniel Vergara ◽  
Gilda Socarrás
Keyword(s):  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Auditory Processing ◽  
Age Of Onset ◽  
Spanish Language ◽  
Auditory Task ◽  
Auditory Modality ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Spanish Heritage Speakers

Processing research on Spanish gender agreement has focused on L2 learners’ and—to a lesser extent—heritage speakers’ sensitivity to gender agreement violations. This research has been mostly carried out in the written modality, which places heritage speakers at a disadvantage as they are more frequently exposed to Spanish auditorily. This study contributes to the understanding of the differences between heritage and L2 grammars by examining the processing of gender agreement in the auditory modality and its impact on comprehension. Twenty Spanish heritage speakers and 20 intermediate L2 learners listened to stimuli containing two nouns with gender mismatches in the main clause, and an adjective in the relative clause that only agreed in gender with one of the nouns. We measured noun-adjective agreement accuracy through participants’ responses to an auditory task. Our results show that heritage speakers are more accurate than L2 learners in the auditory processing of gender agreement information for comprehension. Additionally, heritage speakers’ accuracy is modulated by their Spanish language proficiency and age of onset. Participants also exhibit higher accuracies in cases in which the adjective agrees with the first noun. We argue that this is an ambiguity resolution strategy influenced by the experimental task.

How “Native” Are Heritage Speakers?

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvina Montrul
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Age Of Acquisition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
High Incidence ◽  
Incomplete Acquisition

One of the chief characteristics of heritage speakers is that they range in proficiency from “overhearers” to “native” speakers. To date, the vast majority of linguistic and psycholinguistic studies have characterized the non-target-like linguistic abilities of heritage speakers as a product of incomplete acquisition and/or attrition due to reduced exposure and opportunities to use the language during childhood. This article focuses on the other side of the problem, emphasizing instead the high incidence of native-like abilities in adult heritage speakers. I illustrate this issue with recent experimental evidence from gender agreement in Spanish, a grammatical feature that is mastered at almost 100% accuracy in production by native speakers;yet it is one of the most difficult areas to master for non-native speakers, including near-natives.I discuss how age of acquisition and language-learning experience explain these effects.

The Prosodization of Weak Function Words in Kurdish Language (Leilakhi Dialect)

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 42
Author(s):  
Sadegh Mohammadi Bolban Abad ◽  
Batool Alinezhad ◽  
Vali Rezai
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Personal Pronoun ◽  
Prosodic Structure ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Function Words ◽  
Phonological Process ◽  
Stress Assignment ◽  
Prosodic Phonology

<p>This paper investigates the prosodic structure of simple prepositions and dependent personal pronouns as weak function words in Leilakhi Dialect with the theoretical framework of Prosodic Phonology or Phonology of Domains. Weak function words (fnc) of this dialect are proclitics or enclitics that form Clitic Group (CG) with their host. One such feature of these elements is their combinatorial restriction with their host, <em>i.e. </em>simple prepositions as prosodic proclitics must precede a noun phrase or independent personal pronoun and absolute prepositions as phonological words join the dependent personal pronouns in the role of enclitics which give form to the clitic group. The phonetic process and phonological process used in this research are aspiration and stress assignment pattern respectively. </p>

Morphological generalization in heritage speakers: The Turkish aorist

2021 ◽  
pp. 026765832110592
Author(s):  
Serkan Uygun ◽  
Lara Schwarz ◽  
Harald Clahsen
Keyword(s):  
Language Production ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
Inflectional Morphology ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Rule Based ◽  
Production Experiment ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

Heritage speakers (HS) have been shown to experience difficulties with inflectional morphology (particularly with irregular morphology) and to frequently overapply regular morphology. The present study seeks to get further insight into the inflectional processes of HS by investigating how these are generalized to nonce words in language production, the first study of this kind for heritage Turkish. We specifically examined morphological generalization processes in the Turkish aorist which – unusual for this language – includes both regular and irregular forms. A written elicited-production experiment containing nonce verbs with varying degrees of similarity to existing verbs was administered to Turkish HS and native monolingually-raised Turkish speakers (MS). We also explored how well a formal model that was trained on a large lexical corpus of Turkish matches the human speakers’ performance. Our main finding is that HS employ both similarity-based and rule-based mechanisms for morphological generalization of the Turkish aorist, with subtle differences to the way these mechanisms are applied by Turkish MS.

Abstract WP156: Therapy-related Structural Plasticity Of Temporal White Matter Is Related To Naming Recovery In Aphasia

Stroke ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilie McKinnon ◽  
Russell Glenn ◽  
Ashley Wabnitz ◽  
Jens Jensen ◽  
Joseph Helpern ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Production ◽  
Speech Therapy ◽  
Clinical Performance ◽  
Brain Plasticity ◽  
Mean Diffusivity ◽  
Contralateral Side ◽  
Post Stroke ◽  
Aphasia Therapy ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Semantic Errors

Stroke is the leading cause of adult disability in the USA and aphasia is a common consequence of dominant-hemispheric strokes. It is unclear why some recover with speech therapy, while others persist with debilitating deficits. One theory suggests that therapy-related brain plasticity provides the anatomical substrate for improvements in language. In this longitudinal study, we assessed the integrity of the ipsi- and contralateral inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF) using diffusional kurtosis MRI (DKI), and examined its relationship with aphasia-therapy related changes in semantic errors. 8 subjects (age = 52.0±7.2y; 62% male; MRI time post-stroke = 50.25±29.8m) with chronic post-stroke aphasia received Language Action Therapy for a period of 3 weeks. Structural images (T1 & T2) and DKI (30 directions, b= [1000, 2000 s/mm 2 ]) were acquired. We applied an innovative form of tractography using Diffusion Kurtosis Estimator and a WM mask as a seeding region. Lastly, we optimized the automated fiber quantification software to acquire along-tract diffusion measurements resulting in 100 nodal mean kurtosis (MK), mean diffusivity (MD) and fractional anisotropy (FA) measurements along major tracts. Compared to the contralateral side, the ipsilateral ILF shows diffusion characteristics often found in damaged neuronal tissue: high MD, low FA, and low MK (figure1). The variability is larger on the ipsilateral side, and lowest MK correlated significantly with an increase in semantic errors (r=-0.84, p<0.05). None of the associations with FA and MD reached significance. Additionally, a therapy related reduction in semantic errors was associated with a longitudinal increase in MK (r=-0.89, p<0.05). In conclusion, ILF integrity captured using MK relates to clinical performance with lower MK predicting worse semantic language production, whereas therapy related increases in microstructural complexity (higher MK) were associated with a decrease in semantic errors.

Phonological Production in Young Speakers of Cantonese as a Heritage Language

2020 ◽  
pp. 002383092091046
Author(s):  
Rachel T. Y. Kan
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
First Language ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Language Background ◽  
Background Factors ◽  
Hong Kong Cantonese ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Predictive Effect

This study investigates the phonological production of 50 heritage speakers of Cantonese aged 5–11 in the USA. They were compared to 12 majority language speaker peers in Hong Kong via ratings from first language adult speakers. Overall, the heritage speakers were rated as less native-like and less comprehensible than the children in Hong Kong, although they received higher scores from raters speaking the same variety of Cantonese (i.e., Guangzhou Cantonese, vs. Hong Kong Cantonese). None of the tested language background factors, including age of testing, had a predictive effect on the heritage speakers’ scores. The results illustrate the divergence and heterogeneity of heritage phonology compared to homeland varieties.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document